Apparition
by kosmokomik
Summary: On a planet abandoned after the Unification War, two Spectres are chasing the same asari: in the ruins of the old colony, as paths are crossed, many things are in threat of slipping into obscurity forever. Saren/Nihlus pairing. Updated feb 2011.
1. Chapter I: Flesh and Blood Disintergrate

**Author's note:** Saren is one of the greatest, most layered, villains I have ever encountered in a video game. His motives, and the process behind his making as a zealous defender to a rogue Spectre fascinates me immensely. He has easily been reduced to a simplistic humanity-hater, however, and I always felt this to be immensely unfair. I wrote this, partially to purge the myriads of thoughts and ideas about Saren from my mind, partially to appease someone who wanted more turian slash. I think I accidentally moved away from having the main focus be the slash, though, so it'll probably be a more introspective piece. Aaaand now I'm just rambling.

Read, review if so enclined, & enjoy.

* * *

**Chapter I: Flesh and Blood Disintergrate  
**

* * *

**Warning: engine failure imminent.**

_Yes, yes, I know_, the asari thought to herself, rubbing her forehead as she leaned over the panel, looking at the screens with bleary eyes, observing the blip informing her of the presence of another ship entering the system through the nearby mass relay. She gave out a groan.

Her antagonist must have plotted this chart before he even began the pursuit: forcing her from system to system which only had strict mass relay destinations charted out from them: she couldn't very well had punched in any random coordinates at the previous one – while she was trying to disappear, she also wanted to _survive_ – and her pursuer had probably already tried out some of the other destinations, but found her, he had.

Was there nowhere in this galaxy where she could hide?

Another warning rang out in the small cockpit, and she banged her hand against the panel in frustration, silencing it all momentarily.

Maybe it was time to give up. Maybe the crimes she had committed in the past could be negotiated away with the information she had to provide. Perhaps the Spectre that was after her was a reasonable one, who would be willing to listen, to grant amnesty, in exchange for... In exchange for information which she still had difficulties believing to be true.

No. Surrender wasn't an option, not yet.

As she tapped into the last of the energy reserves, she started up the computer to see if there were any hospitable planets in the system. Had to be, she told herself as she watched the computer booting up and getting its bearings. When the screen blinked and shivered, showing her the planet she had put herself in orbit around, she kicked the thrust into action and turned her ship around.

The descent was sure to attract her pursuer: the heat emitted from a ship while entering into an atmosphere was quite distinct for those searching for it, and she only had a minuscule amount of time to switch on the stealth generator, – which would only run for an extremely limited time – land the space-craft, and get out of the immediate area. She could do it the safety-conscious, proper way, that she had been taught in flight school during her military years... Or, she could race towards her last outpost and hope that she survived.

She chose the latter. Reaching for her phial of red sand, she doused herself in a cloud of it and breathed in slowly once, twice – her biotics activated with a shiver, the drug absorbing into her neural system almost immediately from it – and on the third breath, she slid her hands along the navigational handle. Placing her fingers in the correct position, her mind was completely focused on the task at hand.

Turning the ship, she kicked up the speed another notch – the cockpit was filled with the intense buzzing of warnings as the last reserves were becoming depleted; outside, she could see the red-hot glow of the wing as she pierced through the atmosphere. The green land below was rushing towards her ever faster, and she felt her breathing growing erratic as cracks began to run along the cockpit's window.

A loud beep resonated through her, and then three screens flickered one last time before dying: the engine had given out. The inevitable was moments away, and she felt a rush of life run through her as she traipsed the fine line between life and death. If it had been any other time, she would have enjoyed it. In the present, however, she was all too acutely aware of how she was leaning more towards death than life.

Just seconds before her fighter crashed, the radar registered another, third, ship entering the system; one whose signature she recognized. _Oh Goddess, no_...

* * *

The forest-covered planet was small, but the thick growth of the indigenous flora, as well as a landscape known for its electro-magnetic anomalies, made it an ideal planet for hiding. Nihlus grumbled as he brought his small interceptor down for landing.

He had been tracking a red sand manufacturer through five star clusters, having taken great care even before the pursuit started to figure out all possible routes through the next ten relays available, and chasing her towards a point from where she could no longer escape. The asari, finding herself trapped in a system with only one relay, had quickly made for the only habitable planet. Watching her dangerous descent through his monitors, he had been given one final surprise when she had switched to stealth a few seconds before impact. It gave her a small advantage, but he would soon be able to conquer it.

The planet itself – Bukavon – was an old, abandoned turian colony. During the unification war, the colonists had fought so viciously and remorselessly that they had eradicated themselves in the process. The few, lone survivors had chosen to die with the remains of their colony, and the planet had since then been outside the interests of the Hierarchy.

No official expedition had been made there for hundreds of years, and because of its reputation as a ghost planet, not even pirates or mercenaries delighted particularly much in setting foot on her mineral-rich soil. The turians that had settled there, in the aftermath of the Unification War, had not stayed for more than a decade. As the final scouting reports had been filed, centuries ago, the remains of the colony outpost had been reclaimed by the planet's wild growth, and it was officially deemed a planet of dead memories.

Nihlus had always held a fascination for the bloody and brief history of the Bukavon colony. His own history, and the colony he originated from, surely influenced him in that matter. The mercenary outpost he came from had never gone over well within the Hierarchy, branded as a haven for various outcasts and dissenters.

De-activating the atmospheric re-entry window protectors, he manually scanned the approximate area of where she might have touched down. He quickly found a tower of smoke, and set down his ship further away from it, concerned over any possible delayed explosions.

Locking down his interceptor, he attached his weapons to their respective slots on his hardsuit, feeling the familiar weight of guns on his back as an almost comforting presence. Activating the omni-tool, he followed the blip her ship was emitting on the radar – not enough to qualify as a ship, so it could be possible her stealth generators were still running.

As he walked, he observed the hushed silence of the immediate forest – in the far distance, he could hear what must be the native lifeforms – but the descent of two starships must have scared most of it away from the area. Heavy undergrowth was blocking his path, and he ripped through it with one hand as he pushed on. The rich and varied flora was wildly clinging to each possible place of growth – and with seemingly nothing inhibiting it, it allowed for extreme sizes in everything. Flowers were big enough for him to sleep in, and the thick trees reached up for endless heights towards the sky.

After slashing his way through a thick bush of blue-white thorns, he had arrived. There it was, her small starship... Or what remained of it.

The wings had detached from the fuselage, and a fire was burning at either wing: the hot metal glowing as all colour peeled off. The cockpit itself was half buried in the ground, the window broken – probably from the inside, by her struggling her way out of it.

While she was nowhere in sight or radar distance, he knew – as well as she must have – that she was completely trapped.

Examining the cockpit closer, he saw that there was still a flicker of life in her onboard computer; as he closed the warning dialogues with a shift of the holographic input, he found something much more interesting behind it. Another ship had been registered just before she had gone down. Not surprising – her on-board radar was better than his, probably due to it being a stolen prototype fighter – but what did concern him was that the signature was unknown for him.

Who was this other individual? Did they also have an interest in the running asari, or did they come to lend her aid?

_Either way,_ Nihlus thought grimly, reaching for his pistol, _this will be problematic._

* * *

The first thing she had done when she had crawled out through the cockpit was to climb the nearest, intact tree, fingers grasping at the thick winding ivy as she pulled herself up into the canopy. Once up there, she didn't stop to catch her breath, but pressed on, gracefully jumping from branch to branch as she made to get as far away from the crash site as possible.

And at the forefront of her conscious thoughts, she kept the memory of Benezia.

Within Benezia, she had never found judgement for her crimes. Therefore, she had never felt that in dedicating herself to the Matriarch, she had reached for atonement. If there was no one begging her for an apology, she had nothing to apologize for.

Benezia never reprimanded her, even when she shrugged off her old name and with it, all the associations linked therein. Never once did she demand anything from her followers – they were the ones in search, and they came for guidance, for knowledge; not punishment – and each day in her presence was a blessing, a respite from a life soaked in shifting red sand, in the killing of kindred and striking deals on desolate planets where dead slaves captured by batarians littered the ground.

It had only been a natural choice to follow Benezia when she had made her decision to join Saren in a venture... Even though the ultimate destination lay within a clouded, distant future, she had never felt any doubts in regards to following Benezia. To follow an asari who had never told her that all her choices had been wrong.

In retrospect, she could see that while she had told herself that she had never sought forgiveness from Benezia, she had received it anyhow. _Nothing can be done about the past_, as Benezia had said, _but everything can be done about the future_.

Despite that, there were plenty of moments of the past which could be regretted, no matter what one told themselves. She could still remember the day Saren had appeared at Benezia's Thessian mansion, his arms folded defensively over his chest. His anger sparked a tense atmosphere, as the disciples watched his every move, waiting for a misstep. The blue shimmer of biotics filled the day, but with the onset of night, all hostility wavered.

Benezia and Saren emerged from their private conversation, and the Matriarch outlined her proposal to her followers in such vague terms, but even within that faint outline, many of them had been able to discern great danger. Many chose to leave that night already.

And she stayed – she thought she would always stay, always remain by Benezia's side – and listened.

"There are different paths for all of us to walk," Benezia had spoken, "each one laid out in an intricate way, with smaller ones ceaselessly appearing, forking off from the main path we think we have laid out." She had turned to Saren, addressing him directly. "Let me lend you aid. Let me find a gentler path for us all."

"If you choose to follow," Saren spoke, each word pronounced slowly, turned towards the remaining followers, "then I need warriors. I need fearlessness."

"We will give you all that we have," Benezia said.

How unwittingly right she had been.

* * *

When he found Sovereign, that was the first time Saren had felt true fear.

There had been other fears – or sensations akin to fear – that he had brushed against during his life. The fear felt on the precipice of a battlefield, the way he had when at sixteen, he had gone up against a mercenary detachment with his Cabal unit, the first real battle of his military career; that had been the fear of dawning realization that what he was about to engage in would mean that he could never turn back. That this was his last chance to escape the path that had been laid out for him the moment he had enlisted... And he had thrown himself into the fray regardless.

The deep fear of death that had pierced through him when his brother had died during the Shanxi campaign. It was not that he had consciously ignored the presence of death and what implications it held, but that it had never struck him as hard and full as when his brother had been reduced to a package of belongings, delivered to him by a stern commanding officer.

He had spent a night alone, placing his brother's belongings out on his bed. First the suit – the very suit he must have worn when killed in combat, as the blue blood stains at the collar suggested. He aligned the empty limbs of the suit with precision, but it was still a flat, empty memento of what it had used to hold.

Next, he had placed out all the other belongings around it: there was few of them, his brother having always been an austere turian who did not see the necessity in having more than the absolute necessities. If even that.

With all of it laid out before him, Saren had felt stunned. All the concrete remains of his brother, and it could be obliterated as well. Time would let everyone forget.

Life. So simple, and so easily revoked; refused to continue on. It was a frail little thing, there in one instant, gone the next. It was weak, faint, dependant on organic processes which were more prone to failure than success. Constantly poised to take life's place was death: the eternal darkness from where there was no return, no memory, nothing. And in the end, death was always the conqueror. Not even the asaris could fight it, nor the krogans: it was there, looming behind them, waiting patiently for their time to run out.

He grew obsessed with the cause for life: even if it entailed death, there was purpose behind his actions. In the end, he acted on the behalf of life, and always for life.

Finding Sovereign had meant finding the annihilation of all life, and then, within the inevitable, he saw a way to save it all. He just needed to... Change.

Flexing his geth-designed artifical left arm, he felt the brief electrical impulse of its movement shudder through him. Below, a planet spread out, and somewhere on it, was what he was searching for. Savouring the view of it for only a brief moment, he turned on the sensors, impatiently waiting for a reaction.

* * *

The waters of Virmire lapped against the sandy shore, the steady rhythm of water retreating and returning having grown to be a background noise that Benezia focused her mind on from time to time, clearing all other thoughts but the water itself from her mind.

Her head ached. When Saren was gone, the geth watched her and her followers with close scrutiny – or at least, she felt as much, their cold blue lights following her as she moved through the facility. There was no way of communicating openly in such circumstances, and she had taken to using the using the intimacy of connecting a single minds to another... But even it was becoming fraught with danger. Not everyone could be trusted.

She knew the general outer signs: the lack of emotion in the eyes, the slight tremble of the hands, a twitch of the lips before they spoke. But they were not always present, and there were those who could almost fool her.

She had spent the past few days going through her followers, searching their minds for what shreds of sanity and self there was left. They were disappearing quickly, falling into a void caused by the constant drilling of the signal that Saren's ship emitted. All she could do was watch, powerless.

The sound of footsteps came from behind, and she turned her head just in time to see Shiala's outreached hand – as it connected with her temple, they both closed their eyes, linking their minds together.

_Any news?_

_None. I believe that to be a good sign. How are the younger maidens?_

_It's growing worse. So many of them have given in. _

_I feel that even I am beginning to erode, to vanish, and I apologize. I should have been stronger than this. _

_None of us knew, fully, what it was back then. I should have been the one to have seen the threat, but it is too late now. All we can do is continue. Each day, the skies grow darker, but there must be light somewhere, even it is only within us... Even as we forget..._

_Do you believe she will make it?_

_If not, then there is no one else. _

_There is always you..._

_No... I cannot. My beliefs led my followers to come with me, and now that they are reduced to smithereens of what they once were, it is my obligation to care and protect them before they give in completely. It is my task to bury their corpses, and pray that their minds have returned to the source of where we all come from._

_So we wait to see how it went?_

_We wait, indeed._

_The odds are not favourable. _

_Life never has favourable odds._


	2. Chapter II: The Shaking of the Sky

**Chapter II: The Shaking of the Sky**

* * *

Another cloud of red dust engulfed her face. She shut her eyes tight, feeling the eyeballs tremble wildly underneath the eyelids. How long since she had slept? A day or two, possibly more – space travel tended to send her into a frame of mind wherein she lost all track of time. It could take her days after touching down and acclimatizing herself with the planet before she found a natural rhythm of waking and sleeping again – and if she was riding the energy of red sand, the process would be even longer.

Her hand clutched at the thick trunk of the tree: it was covered with green growth that laced its way across, and it had a divine scent. She pressed her face against it, inhaling deeply as quietly as she could, and with her lungs full, she raced off the thick branch and jumped to the next one. Barely had she landed before she sized up the possible next path, when she turned around to have a look back and noticed something very peculiar. She could trace out her traversed path perfectly, if only because the branches seemed to move together at those points, forming... Bridges.

It was a familiar sight; in the commando camps in the forests outside Armali, the trees had been shaped like it from years of guerilla practice. In fact, on all asari planets that still had forests, it was a very likely sight, if only because the military preferred to be prepared, shaping the trees to ease for quick military movements. If all else fell on an asari world, then the forest would be where the commandos would fight back with everything they had. And most likely win.

But why was the tree technique present in the tree crowns of this forsaken planet? Nothing about it indicated a current intelligent lifeform population.

"What is this place?" she wondered in a whisper; somewhere in the distance, there was a caw from what she assumed to be an avian creature.

Just as she was about to turn her attention back to the path ahead of her, she heard a great rumble from the skies. _Not another hallucination, please, I don't have time..._ Peeking up through the dense foliage, she saw a glimmer in the sky – and then, there it was. Swooping over the trees.

_Saren._

She pressed herself against the tree trunk; her specially-made suit neutralized most thermal and sensor readings, but if she was visually seen, it was all for nothing. Crouching down, she tucked her head between her knees, covering the back of her head best she could through placing her forearms over it. The roar of the engines in the air were almost unbearable, ripping into her skull. She wanted to scream; to crush her head between her thighs and just... Not be there.

Biting down on the inside of her cheeks, she shut her eyes tight. She stopped breathing, stopped moving, stopped thinking – the noise just seemed to grow louder – had he found her, had he seen her? _Shit shit shit shit shit–_

Then, the vicious metallic growl began to move away, petering out in the distance. She let go of her cheeks and breathed in as deep as her position would allow her; then she opened her eyes, let go of her head, and looked up.

Leaves, fallen from the air disruption the ship had provided, were scattered all around her. She felt them fall off her as she rose up slowly, her jagged breathing making her dizzy.

Her hands were trembling as she jumped off the branch and onto the next tree. _I'm going to die here_, she thought desperately. A very palpable sensation of fear rushed through her, followed by how her entire body began trembling. As she leaned against the trunk for support, a strangled sob escaped from her.

* * *

The only threat posed by Virmire were the pod crabs that scurried along the waterline, fearful of the new additions to the fauna. When they sensed an unfamiliar movement in the water, they immediately scattered, squeaking small noises that were barely perceptible.

Shiala followed after Benezia, her water-proof boots sinking into the sand as the Matriach walked ahead, her bare feet seemingly just skimming across the dunes, the foot prints no more than a slight indentation in the shifting sands. As usual, Shiala felt that all the supposed grace of her commando ways fell to nothing when compared to the beauty and elegance of Benezia: an asari who seemed to know every part of herself and exerted such perfect control over her own body. Not a superfluous movement, never an unpresentable appearance.

She could not say the same for herself. Each day spent in the base, she felt an increasing difficulty in getting out of bed, in concentrating for longer periods of time, in maintaining her cool in all situations. It had come slowly, one symptom at a time. At first, she had just dismissed them as nothing, but observing how the others in the asari group were faring, she recognized that it was _something._

There, on the beach, she felt a twitch in her right hand – looking down on it, she saw that it was trembling. The erratic kind. The one where she felt it reverberating within her, how it made her biotics practically itch to activate. Another symptom, another step closer to...

Shiala looked up from her hand, her gaze landing on Benezia who was walking a few paces ahead. Having been a disciple for nearly two centuries, she had learnt to understand the minor signs that the Matriarch displayed. The way she currently had her shoulders positioned – a bit too pulled back, something that was likely to cause discomfort in most other people – was a sign that there was something weighing on her mind.

_Though these days, everything must be weighing on Benezia_, Shiala thought, clenching her hands behind her back as she approached the Matriarch.

"I found it difficult to wake up this morning," Benezia said, her feet moving through the water with a soft sloshing sound. "I could see the morning light through my eyelids, could feel the sunlight on my face, streaming in through the window. Yet, I could not open my eyes, couldn't move my body. Skimming the land between dream and waking, I fell back into a dream I could not remember having. A dream about the fall; of falling with a sensation that I was truly falling naked through a void, the wind hitting against my spine as I saw the light disappearing in the distance."

"You know what this means," Shiala said, voice even despite the rage and horror she was feeling within. That even Benezia was beginning to fall... How? How could it be allowed to happen? If Benezia was beginning to crumble, then who could possibly resist the effect of indoctrination?

"I do." Benezia stopped with a soft sigh, crossing her arms over her chest as she turned to look at Shiala. "I still remember when the first, youngest maidens told us of their recurring nightmares. All we did was watch them as they became more and more lost within themselves, not fully understanding what was happening. And then, it spread. And our eyes were opened to the horror that awaited us all." She shrugged her shoulders. "How much longer will we hold out?"

Was this the time to confess?

The trembling hands were not the only condition Shiala had hid from Benezia – when the dreams began haunting her at night, she had told herself it was just one-offs; every single time, she would wake sweaty, sitting upright in the bed, whispering calming things to herself.

"Then let me ask you, what do you remember?"

"Of what?"

"Think of your father."

"My father... He was a krogan, named Inamorda. Or is, I am unsure if he is still alive. He raised me after my mother left – she was a bounty hunter – and taught me how to hunt varren, to spot that which was wrong with just a quick glance. He taught me how to handle every kind of weapon available; he travelled with me to cold planets to build up my tolerance, to warm planets to build up my stamina. Then, a bit older than what is usual, he presented me at a military recruiting center."

"And you were accepted."

"The most promising recruit in a century. My father was proud..." Shiala struggled to recall what happened after that, but however she turned it over in her mind, she kept drawing blanks. "I think he left me there. But I don't, I don't know, there's..." She looked up at Benezia, drawing a shaky breath. "I forgot. It's gone. There's nothing there."

"Then why did you leave to join me?"

"I... The reasoning escapes me, for the moment." It was unnerving Shiala; she hadn't actively reflected on the past, too caught up as she was in the present. Now, as she tried to find it, it was deteriorating before her, one piece at a time falling away. How long until she was rendered useless to Benezia? How long until she was deemed useless by Saren? What purpose could she serve as a mindless drone?

"What is your mother's name?" Benezia asked.

Shiala froze, then averted her eyes. "I can't remember."

They stood quiet, the only sound punctuating the tense silence the sea as it swelled against the beach, then receded, over and over again. The confession hung in the air, both of them knowing full well what it meant. Yet, Shiala wasn't willing to give up – not just yet – she wanted to be there for Benezia. She wanted to be herself. She wanted to live.

"Do you still trust me?" Shiala asked. For the first time in many years, a strange feeling rushed through her. _Nervousness._She hadn't experienced it since the day her father dumped her at the military academy and set off for his own life.

Benezia stepped closer to the other asari, tilting her head to the left as she looked intently into Shiala's eyes. Putting her hand on the commando's cheek, she smiled faintly. "For a while yet," she said, planting a soft kiss on Shiala's lips. "For a while yet."

* * *

When Saren came upon the barely-concealed interceptor, he had to shake his head at the ironic twists fate sometimes took.

He recognized the ship well – how could he not? It had been a gift from him to Nihlus when the younger turian had been inducted as a Spectre. The soldier once stamped as completely unsuitable for a professional military career had found his place; Saren had felt an incredible pride in managing to uncover such a raw talent... And had then struggled with what Nihlus brought forth in him.

Saren had quickly requested for Nihlus to be assigned to him, and he remembered the superior officer's hesitation. The turian general had argued that there were many other, equally full of potential – why was Saren so keen on having the outcast, the pirate son, the disobedient soldier? _Because what I see in him, you cannot. That is why I am a Spectre, and you will never be._ There were no more questions. Nihlus was his.

The first days of their first mission together – to track down and eliminate an illegal arms dealer hiding in the Horsehead Nebula – had not been smooth. Nihlus did not respond well to Saren's commands, purposefully ignoring them and taking things into his own hands. Even as they entered into the fray of battle together, it seemed that they were fighting their enemies as much as each other; supposedly stray bullets leaving marks on their armor, a misjudged grenade throw exploding extremely close to the other.

It had continued. They antagonized each other throughout the days in the beginning, the young one hostile, the older one frustrated. As much as Nihlus drove Saren up against a wall, Nihlus kept up a cool front, his voice always hinting at a slight amusement whenever he dropped a biting remark – and Saren admired it. He swung between appreciating the outcast and wanting to gut him where he was standing; it was a fine line.

And one day, that smile in his voice, it drove Saren over the edge. Without care, he had Nihlus pressed up against the wall – thinking he would show the young one who was in charge – and had instead been surprised at himself for just holding Nihlus there, their eyes locked, but neither making a move.

Nihlus had been the one to take control then, when he had lifted his hand to Saren's face, touching the grey turian's jaw gently. The touch hadn't surprised Saren – he realized he had been expecting it – and he had been absolutely still as Nihlus continued touching him with that gentle hand, fingers trailing out a path along the neckline until they came to rest on the back of his head. Once there, Nihlus bent his head down, brushing mandible against mandible.

At that point, it became unbearable for Saren. He broke their bodily contact and left the room.

Their partnership calmed down – and the year progressed. Saren watched and noted how Nihlus' skill became more and more refined; all the while noting the growing feral lust that was building up within him for the other turian. The more time that passed, the more Saren felt a need to act upon what he felt – but each time his blood seemed to boil, he calmed himself. He had to wait. He knew it would come.

One night, after a brief report with the Council, he had secured a Spectre status for Nihlus – and it was time. He invited Nihlus over to his apartment on the Presidium, and they had progressed slowly through a tense evening; both seemed aware of what was coming, but were avoiding breaching it directly.

Ultimately, Saren was unsure of how it started that night – had it been the exchange of glances, or the alcohol influencing them, or how they even made it to bed – but he did remember what he had said there.

"This means everything," he had whispered, pinning down Nihlus in bed, tearing at his clothes to come off, "so don't get the wrong idea."

His biotic implants suddenly flared up – something that had been happening more and more often as of late, especially since the geth graft had replaced his arm. Excessive amounts of electric currents in his body, perhaps. He shrugged it off.

So Nihlus was here as well. How twisted fate could be. It had been a while now since they had last seen each other. And Saren had been thinking of extending an offer to Nihlus. How perfect, then, that they should both be here.

Sovereign had gone through what connections and resources Saren had, trying to find what it deemed useful for his success. Nihlus had been of interest – and what was of interest to Sovereign, was of interest to Saren.

* * *

The sun was barely registering in the sky – an orange sliver of it, surrounded by red streaks that eventually dimmed into a blue that grew darker and darker the further it got from the lingering light, and stars were already beginning to appear. The constellations were completely foreign to Nihlus: but their shapes must have taken on some meaning to the inhabitants of the colony. They had, after all, recorded the constellation patterns on certain building facades – but whatever explanation they had written next to it was lost to him. The language, supposedly invented by a group of linguists that had come there to decipher Prothean archeology finds, had been adopted by the colony during the Unification War... And had died on that planet, its deciphering key unknown to the rest of the Hierarchy.

He had stumbled across the remains of the Bukavon colony entirely by accident. The settlement was bigger than he had expected – and it was completely dead. Large buildings were crumbling before him, and others were being devoured inside out from the planet's growth, the peeling exterior surfaces swallowed in bright bursts of green, blue and red. The paths between the buildings were hard to distinguish, covered as they were in all kinds of unknown flowers; Nihlus moved gingerly across them, feeling the branches snap under his feet, the moss absorbing his movements.

He had read the history of Bukavon's colony. A simple outpost at first, filled with scientists studying the flora and fauna of the wondrous planet – and there, they had slowly started to develop revolutionary thinking regarding the turian Hierarchy. The rumor about the radical colony spread, and soon dissidents gathered, eager to find a sanctuary. Eager to find independence from the system they had grown up in. They became another rebelling colony in the Unification War, but only because they wanted absolute and utter freedom from the Hierarchy.

A flash of bright, white paint on a wall caught his eye, half-hidden underneath a vine, and he reached out and began tearing away the vines, slowly exposing the massive painting that covered the entire remaining structure. The insignia of the Bukavon colony.

Like many rebelling colonies during the Unification War, Bukavon had chosen to distinguish themselves from the turian homeplanet through creating their own, unique insignia. What was so different – and very telling – about Bukavon, was that theirs had been... Extreme.

In front of him, the wall cleared. The insignia was still, after a thousand years, vividly bright: a perfect map of what the Bukavon spirit embodied. Rejection of the Hierarchy. The face scales painted completely white, except for stripes following the dips between scales, and no coloration on the mandibles – mainly because many removed theirs. Their appearance must have been chilling for other turians to behold.

When the first expeditions of the Hierarchy went to Bukavon after peace had been negotiated, they found only one last turian alive: a warrior who sat in the colony's centre hexagon. He was apparently meditating, his hands tightly gripping a spear against which he leaned his forehead. Then, when the scouting team had called out to him, he had risen slowly. He talked to the team with a slow, languid voice – but they could not understand a word of what he said; it was completely foreign to them.

The young warrior had raised his spear, and then lowered it, pointing the tip of it against his own chest. "_I am the last_," he said, in a broken, heavily accented Pavalen mainland-dialect. "_We chose death. We chose freedom_." With a swift thrust, he had impaled himself upon the spear and fell to the ground. The last words he uttered were: "_I am Nihlus. I am free_."

A millenia later, his own father had grown obsessed with the story, beset with ideas for finding the freedom he so desired from the strict Hierarchy. In a tribute, he had given the last warrior's name to his only son; and thus marked him as an outcast for life.

There, in the hexagon centre of the settlement, modernity's tribute converged with the history's original. The spear, immortalized as a statue, still stood in the middle, even though blossoms had begun sneaking up it. The last thing the Hierarchy had done to Bukavon before chosing to try and forget it completely: raise a monument to what they deemed as the surrender of the colony.

The statue evoked a sense of home for him. In the distant reaches of turian space, the outpost where he had been born and raised was re-creating history, however slowly – a small rebellion endlessly pushed back by the gently rebuffing hand of the Hierarchy. His father had died in the name of the colony; his mother had lost her sanity to it. Because he wore its insignia, every turian knew immediately who he was. Did they think they could succeed where Bukavon had failed? _Time will tell._

A noise cut through the calm of the centre plaza: his omni-tool was beeping. Activating it, he saw that there was someone else in the city. Or something. There was no indication of what it was, beyond a moving, breathing lifeform – the sensors were unreliable with the electro-magnetic fields playing their tricks on the planet. They might just be reading it wrong. Or it could be the other star ship's owner. Or the asari.

Nihlus wasn't ready to take any risks. Raising his rifle, he turned towards where the blip was originating from. With a deep breath, he took a first, tentative step into the long shadows falling across the plaza.

* * *

She couldn't keep up the breakneck speed she had been racing at through the treetops – and with the sun dipping below the horizon, she had to find somewhere safe to rest. _Just a bit further_, she told herself, swinging herself between the thick vines hanging from the overgrown trees. Her eyelids were growing too heavy to keep up, but she couldn't take another dosage of red sand for a few hours, and even that was pushing it. Her nervous system was frayed.

A languid hand reached out for the next vine, but as she grabbed it, she heard a crack from farther up. Before she had even registered what had happened, she was falling. All she could think was that she was tired – then a darkness enveloped her, and she lost consciousness.


	3. Chapter III: The Sound of Silence

**Author's Note:** Apparently I'm still alive. Uhm. Surprise?

* * *

**Chapter III: The Sound of Silence**

* * *

Admittedly, he was being arrogant, but Saren still knew his protege. He knew that Nihlus would not shoot at him no matter how he approached, even in the thickening darkness of the Bukavon night.

There were some flaws he hadn't managed to eradicate from Nihlus – he always took in the situation at hand, however briefly, before acting on it. That fraction of a second where his eyes would skim across the scene, even in a completely hostile environment he looked for a hint of hospitality.

He stalked Nihlus – who, from the way his right shoulder tensed, knew he was being watched – if only because it was tradition. The game, the prey and the predator, the way they had always been. Antagonizing each other even when it was meant to be beyond the realm of appropriateness.

Years ago, they had been on a mission together. Only, as they had entered the atmosphere of the highly volatile planet, the atmospheric clouds raging with strong thunderstorms that lashed out at the ship. Normally, it was something any well-built vessel could take, but the systems had shut down. It was a long line of failures, and Nihlus had made a poorly timed joke about how you never could trust hanar machinery before the engine malfunctioned and forced an emergency evacuation.

The last thing Saren saw of Nihlus before ground had rushed up against him was Nihlus' spiralling out of control towards a mountain wall. He'd been lucky enough himself to land just a bit out in the vast sea, the crystal-clear blue water carrying him ashore.

Without any signs from Nihlus, he assumed the worst had happened and pushed on towards his destination while in the back of his mind he was trying to convert the raging torrents of loss – always the loss, the damn loss, the vicious cold hand of death reaching towards him and instead taking those he cared about – into anger. Anger was a better weapon to wield on a planet crawling with smugglers than carrying the mark of loss like a glowing sign, asking to be shot in the head.

Still, trying to suppress the thought of Nihlus as a lifeless corpse that would never respond to his touch, that the moans and shivers of pleasure had forever fallen out of his reach to elicit, haunted him even as he found the wide-spread base complex. The dull grey colour made it blend in from high altitude, he theorized, and and noted that even the smaller details all went in a carefully selected colour scheme that barely diverged from the planet's own natural surroundings.

In the back of his mind, he sorted it into one of the more impressive bases he'd found. True, there were improvements that could be made, particularly in fortifying the sewer system. And general surveillance.

The act of keeping the torrents of thoughts, of emotions, at bay in regards to Nihlus must have obscured his perception of things. Not that he found himself with many other options: making camp to mourn wasn't a part of how he acted. He was a Spectre, constantly pushing himself into the thick of danger: he was the knife-edge upon which safety balanced.

So when he almost his arm shot off by an unidentifiable assailant, he'd been... Annoyed, to put it mildly.

As he'd chased the well-aiming (in that he never actually shot Saren anywhere lethal or movement-hindering) figure, he'd known in some depth of him. The thrill of the chase through the facility lined with bodies – Saren only glanced at them, but he knew they'd either have their necks snapped with precision that only years of training could produce, or a single wound in a perfect spot leaving a pool of blue or red blood on the floor. He knew who his prey was, he knew the path wasn't picked at random. It was all part of the game that made his blood pump harder and sharpened his focus.

On Bukavon, the wildlife was eerily quiet: the disturbances on the ground must have made them all flee in terror. There hadn't been turians living on the planet for centuries, that Saren and Nihlus, bipedal humanoids, were stalking across the surface must have be a horrifying vision for the fauna.

Saren watched Nihlus from the safety of the deep shadows of the decaying colonization effort. The younger turian was moving with uncertain steps, tense eyes scanning the perimeter around him and trying to decipher what misinformation his devices were relaying to him.

Deep breath. Line it up. See it.

He functioned like machinery in these situations, years of practice guiding his movements. At the same time as he breathed in, he adjusted the sight, tracking Nihlus and settling in to wait for the exact moment when he could fire that single shot.

The memories it evoked, the reversal of roles – Nihlus must have done the exact same thing all those years ago, crouching in position, waiting patiently for the split-second when the envisioned projectile line would appear flawlessly – it made Saren smile slightly. Their game repeated itself infinitely, it seemed, that one was always pointing the gun at the other, in complete control of the other's life with the mere twitch of a trigger finger. That if they weren't so rigorously trained, so measured in their preciseness, they would be dead by the other's hand long ago.

Part of the thrill, part of the pain. There could never be anyone but Nihlus, who he had foolishly tried to mould in his own image but who'd just broken out of the shadow and gone on to be himself. Uncompromising, unflinching, and so deliciously lethal.

The moment approached, he could feel it. Exhaling slowly, he did a final adjustment and then pulled the trigger without a second thought.

With a perfect shot, he grazed the arm of Nihlus, the projectile firing off into the wilderness. Spectacularly coloured birds fled up in the sky, cawing nervously at the unknown noises bouncing off the trees.

Nihlus spun around, finger clasping the trigger tightly, eyes narrowed and focused straight at Saren who'd stepped out of the security of shadows. Both with guns drawn and aimed at each other, the air was tense.

Saren smiled. "Just like old days," he said. He lowered his weapon first. As a gesture of politeness. "I didn't hurt you."

Nihlus didn't stir a muscle either way, seemingly thinking a great many things over as he processed the scene. The new development of their game.

Of course, things had changed, even Saren had to acknowledge as much when his enhanced arm sent a shrill signal through his exoskeleton, pushing his self-control of not moving a single muscle to the extreme. Bukavon's magnetic fields were tearing into his own extensive implants, causing excruciating flare-ups of pain at times.

Meeting Nihlus again was bittersweet, if only because it reminded him of a simpler time when he hadn't been the knife-edge cutting into the future of all sentient life in the galaxy. When he'd just been a Spectre, not a saviour.

* * *

Light, tickling.

She opened her eyes slowly, shielding her eyes with one hand. There was no sensation in the other, although the rest of her body was screaming with pain and her head aching as if it had been split it in two and was poorly kept together by sheer force of will. Still. Pain was better than nothing. Better than death.

Small, thin shafts of light were filtering down through the thick canopy to wherever she was. The damp air hung thick around her, the dust sticking to her skin as she flexed her limbs out in front of her. They all hurt with vengeance, but she was unable to determine if it was from the fall, grievous injury or the over-exertion she'd put them through with the drugs and days without rest.

Stifling a yawn, she realized she'd been sleeping. The lingering effects of red sand were still poking at her consciousness, but there was also the relaxation of a rested mind calming her tense, strung-out nervous system.

It took a while to adjust herself into a semi-seated position, her back leaned against a cool, flat surface as she blinked wildly, eyes attempting to adjust to the light – or lack of it. The hole, which she was convinced was what she had landed in, had a strange darkness about it. Light seemed to poke little shafts down into it, but barely penetrated the obscuring factor of it at all.

Beneath her body, things were being crushed. Small, fragile things. Cracking dryly, sounding like small twigs and dry leaves. Groping around with her hand, she felt something hard and grasped hold of it, lifting it up into her lap. The strange shape seemed familiar, but her head was floating in thin air and she was unable to place exactly where she had seen it before.

Fingers tracing the shape, she tilted her head back and followed the hollows of it. It felt like a human head, male, the soft round shape forming the back. Dragging her lazy fingers to the other side of it, she nestled them into the frontal hollows, her thumbs circling the strange protrusions leading down past the nasal and oral cavities.

The moment she remembered what the shape was, her hands put a bit too much pressure on the fragile old Prothean skull, crumbling to dust in her hands.

Her mouth hung open, letting out a hoarse cry that sounded more as if it came from a feral, dying beast than a well-trained commando.

* * *

It was that day that Benezia stopped counting losses and accepted that loss was inevitably her fate too.

As they had descended into the submissive, drone-like state that eventually came to affect them all, they had come to Benezia, asking for her help. What help could she offer, beyond motioning for those still strong enough to run?

Some of them had, and they had been annihilated by Saren and his geth. Each time, Benezia had to swear that she'd been completely in the dark about their intentions. And each time, Benezia could feel Saren measuring her symptoms, watching for her to begin to show that soon, even she, would be all his. That then, there would be no hidden things, no questions she could avoid answering.

To others, as the realization of certain doom settled in, she had given a different advice. To find the mental strength to seal off one part of themselves, to hopefully keep up those barriers long enough to not have them brought down by the ceaseless signal drilling into their sanity.

Not a lot of them succeeded. Even as Benezia herself began to erect her walls, barricading the last pieces of herself, she felt the tinge of uncertainty. Shiala was slipping away in front of her eyes, giving up pieces of her mind in exchange for the indoctrination to hurt less. It was a pain, in the end, it hurt having that noise in the back of your head, driving you sleepless. The longer you failed at blocking it out, the more susceptible you became as it gnawed away at your strength.

The days when Benezia couldn't muster up the strength to fend it off were becoming more common.

In the back of her mind, she thought of her daughter.

Her Little Bird. Her memory of what she had accomplished, truly achieved in her life: the only daughter she'd ever had, the vague outline of her long-lost partner in the way Liara smiled. Her pride, her joy, her deepest loss. They hadn't even said farewell properly. All the regrets that hung in the air, all the things they had yet to do, yet to speak of. All the years that were lost in the wake of the foolish undertaking she had led herself into.

Even the thought made her cheeks stain with tears, but it had to be done.

She needed to eradicate Liara from her memories completely, if only to keep her safe from Saren's interests. From his claws destroying everything.

* * *

She refused to die in a pit of ancient Protheans piled up all around her. Plain. Out. Refused. Their extinction wasn't her problem, sad as it was, and she sure wasn't letting their failure to circumnavigate death drag her down. She had to find a way out.

As her eyes had adjusted to the darkness, she'd been able to make out the hole – which was less a hole, more an underground shelter. Her high-velocity fall from the far canopy must have broken through the crumbling ceiling and she had been lucky enough to land in a soft pile of dirt. Or at least she thought back on it as dirt, not to keen to actually dig deeper.

She'd never been that into history, particularly ancient history. Who cared about what happened to races gone since over tens of thousands of years, except that nervous little kid of Benezia's? Cute as she was, and the vaguely flirtatious approaches she'd tried on the matriarch's daughter, she never had responded or even noticed, but rather had babbled on and on about Protheans.

There was some schism in Liara's, or was it Lirra? Red sand was wrecking her memory, she promised herself she would quit when she got out of there. She stopped in the narrow, deteriorating corridor, rubbing her forehead. Her thoughts were too disjointed.

Liara. Schism. With the regular accounting of Protheans. One faction thought there had been some mass extinction by a foreign, never before heard of, race, and the other plain didn't. She couldn't remember which was which – and under her breath she cursed the drugs again – but she really wanted all the hours she'd spent trying to get close to Liara back. So many history lessons she didn't care for! What purpose did history fill if you tried to live on the current of life, riding the high of the pulse itself?

Groping in the darkness, her hand landed on a smooth surface that responded to her touch. Suddenly, the entire underground path lit up, flashing lights radiating all around.

Instinctively she tried to move back and away from it, but found herself unable to. A biotic field was lifting her up in the air, and she hung suspended mid-air for a few seconds, eyeing the odd device with suspicion before something assaulted her mind. Unable to defend herself, she accepted what she had brought on.

It came through in fragmentary, dense bursts, images conveying something yet also splicing her head open with the brute way they were imposing themselves into her.

The images made her retch. As they flashed in front of her eyes, she could smell the seared flesh, feel the cold metal implanting against her bones as her scales were being peeled apart. She could feel the changes – not that it was her asari physiology, but this other one, this race being pulled apart at the seams and... Disappearing.

The fear, the others trying to flee. So many planets darkened, skies put out, and the hurt, the intrusive pain permeating everything. The smell in the air that made her nostrils itch.

When the biotic field let her down, she collapsed on the floor on all fours, breathing in the musty dirt as she tried the best she could to keep her head from splitting apart in pain. "Breathe," she told herself, spitting on the ground, "just fucking breathe."

* * *

Saren was different.

Nihlus observed his elder mentor sleeping in the growing morning light. They'd spent the night doing what they did best when together, time slipping away as they explored and re-learned each other's bodies, dryly remarking on new scars which would provoke a story in the scarred one. If they'd met on the Citadel or Omega, they would – maybe – have gotten out of their lust-crazed cocoon and have a drink, or eat.

It was harder to forget so completely about the passage of time in civilized environments, whereas on a planet like this, time could have stretched on forever with just the two of them. _Could have_, because the years have ravaged them both, and the enthrallment found in each other wasn't as intoxicating anymore. At least, that's how Nihlus perceived the situation.

Physically, the changes were obvious. His arm... Nihlus had heard about the injury through hearsay; Saren didn't move through Council space much anymore, only reporting in via holographic emitters. People in the tower had whispered about Saren, that he seemed to have been taking some very grievous wounds in his investigations in the smuggling operations out in the Terminus systems, but Nihlus hadn't been able to imagine that his entire arm had been replaced by an artifical graft.

And for a few years, the rumour had gone around claiming Saren had met with his end out there. There were no reports, no communications, a year of silence in all channels. They had even during their most dire missions at least sent one short line to the other: _Even the stench of Omega's underbelly would triumph over this swamp of a colony; S_. For a year, Nihlus had waited for that illusive line, but his work didn't stop – he worked the borders of Council space, slowly slipping into a more public and diplomatic role, and he slowly began to accept the silence for death.

When Saren re-emerged, Nihlus was jarred. He tried ignoring the conflict it stirred up, but they were relentless. The messages he sent, however cryptic, never received a reply, and Saren never came by the Citadel in person. Yet there he was, coming through from another part of the galaxy, just forever outside his reach.

Time passes fast on the Citadel, even faster on Omega. Working the space station cities was a better cure than long stretches of nothingness out in the unruly systems, and he ended up in new beds, tangled in other's dirty sheets. He did what most did – tried letting go and getting on with his own life.

Yet, with Saren right there, right in front of him, he'd lapsed into their old habits as if the years between then and the present never happened. In the aftermath, though, not even the furious touch of a starved former lover had been able to completely suppress the torrent he'd unlocked.

Nihlus' thoughts drifted to the prior night, the uncanny sensation of that constructed arm on him, and Saren seemingly oblivious to that fact – all he thought about was the last mission of theirs. _Remember when we did this last?_ How could he forget their lethal games.

Following their mission on Virmire, which had been an improvised success often hailed in sealed Spectre history, they had never been on a mission together. Even though neither had spoken of it, Nihlus had been able to tell that the ghost of what he had possibly lost had troubled Saren greatly. That planet had changed them both, and they'd each slipped into their own paths.

It'd been the mission Nihlus had proved himself and what he could do to his mentor, and there seemed to be nothing left to say. Shortly afterwards, Saren had disappeared. Either way he turned or twisted it, he ended up in the turmoil of what he'd gone through being the one left in the dark for so long. The years were nothing but empty filler, and if one of them was stuck thinking of their bonds as still being on the same conditions as back then, then the other was bound to get pulled through to the past and end up there as well.

There were many great things to touch upon, and many questions he felt he had a right to have answered.

The implants along Saren's jaw glowed dimly as Nihlus ran the back of his hand along them, rousing Saren from his shallow sleep. As much as things had changed – and moved the two of them from each other inevitably – there was the chance that the past could be resurrected. That not everything in the past was doomed to be buried and forgotten, but that the soothing effect, as well as the rushing of blood and aggressive bordering of pleasure and pain – that the little details were still there. The way one affected the other, and kept them intricately bound in their complex tug back and forth, desire and danger, death and living.

First thing Saren did when he woke up was check that his pistol was where he left it. Not that he'd need it, they both knew that with a twitch of the finger Saren could have ripped the younger turian apart.

As Saren drew closer, Nihlus identified five different weak spots he could use to have the other one at the mercy of his will. Or dead.

* * *

_Feel the eternity, the endlessness, that which is the core of us all. Feel it inside of you, feel it embracing you, feel it engulfing you._

_Feel it devouring you._

Shiala, eyes still closed, leaned over and threw up, her stomach ejecting nothing but green bile at this point that burned her throat raw. The bitter liquid swirled at the bottom of the white plastic container she clutched between her legs, her hands massaging her temples.

The simple act of meditation was beyond her. While the words and the pictures from all her years of practice still could be brought up within her, the actual sensation was gone.

She retched again, but nothing came out. Droplets of sweat gathered in the folds of her skin, making her shiver in the cool night air. After a while of dry retching, she took her chances and pushed the bucket away, breathing in deeply of the salt-tinged air.

Shiala had made up her mind, but it wasn't without a lot of shame. Even her body was rejecting her mind's betrayal, and she even felt disconnected from the metaphysical. Just a determined thought in a disassociated, disobeying being, trying to beat the fact of the decision into her. Benezia had forgiven her, she had to remind herself of that, had to...

She wanted to feel metal. Cold, hard metal against her skin.

The urge startled her into opening her eyes, and she crawled up from her seated position on the floor-bed and zipped up her uniform, heading out through the facility to find the vision she had of clean, smooth, vaguely reflective metal. It had to be the right surface, otherwise it wouldn't count. Count towards what? Why did the surface suddenly mean so much to her? And why metal of all things to crave? If anything, she should be craving Thessian cuisine, like the delicate flower petals peeled from the thick stems, dipped in thick juices.

The thought of food oddly enough did nothing for her. Food. Thessian food. What did it mean?

Nothing.

She just wanted metal.

The corridors of the complex were quiet, geth patrolling them. As she passed, the discordant hum from them grew, and as she took another pair of stairs up to the AA tower she noted that one was following her. Its weapon wasn't drawn, seemingly just observing her, as if it was... Curious?

There was a time when she had wanted to fling every geth she came across into the hard concrete walls, crush their shells and innards against the surface until they were nothing but scrap metal. Once, a while ago, before she got started craving this strange thing.

Metal. She could practically taste it in her mouth.

A set of elevator doors opened up as she passed them by, and she eyed the walls in them before stepping in. The lone geth apparently considered getting in with her, but didn't, just lowering its head-like extension as the doors closed.

When they did, Shiala immediately slammed the emergency stop button and stood to face the wall.

Forming one hand into a hard fist, she punched the metallic surface. Her knuckles left an imprint in the surface, and she leaned in, pressing her soft cheek into the hollow she had created. Then she heaved a sigh out of her exhausted body and let go, feeling it devouring her.


End file.
